Abortion insurance law taking effect in Michigan

5:34 AM, March 12, 2014

Anti-abortion activist and attorney Rebecca Kiessling, center, and others who say they were born as a result of rape, urged lawmakers to pass the citizen-initiated proposed law targeting insurance coverage of abortion in Michigan. The law takes effect Thursday, March 13, 2014. / Associated Press

By Louise Knott Ahern

Gannett Michigan

Michigan residents who buy health coverage in the private marketplace after Thursday will not have access to abortion coverage, even if a pregnancy is the result of rape or incest.

On that day, a new state law goes into effect that prohibits insurance companies from covering abortion services unless customers purchase separate add-ons — called riders — to their insurance plans ahead of time.

No insurance companies will be offering those riders to new customers in the private marketplace after Thursday, according to the state’s Department of Insurance and Financial Services.

Insurers had to tell the state in February if they planned to offer and sell the abortion riders. Seven companies indicated they plan to do so but only as part of employer-based plans, department spokesman Caleb Buhs said.

That means anyone who purchases insurance as an individual — either inside or outside the new federal health-care exchange — will not be able to obtain coverage for abortion services.

“People who buy coverage for themselves and their families will not find this coverage,” said Marianne Udow-Phillips of the Center for Healthcare Research and Transformation. “It will not be available to them.”

It’s unclear how much the riders in the employer-sponsored plans will cost. Buhs said one company has listed the rider at 32 cents per month.

The Abortion Insurance Opt-Out Act was passed in December by the Republican-controlled Legislature after an emotional and heated debate that garnered national attention.

Proponents say the law protects those who object to abortion from having any of their premiums used to cover the procedure for other customers in their group plans or within the health-care exchange.

“Do we anticipate this will lower abortion rates? No,” said Right to Life Michigan spokeswoman Genevieve Marnon. “But ... it’s one thing for you to pay for your abortion and another thing for me to have to pay for it.”

Opponents say the bill threatens women’s health by limiting access to a procedure that is legal and constitutionally protected.

Democrats labeled it the “rape insurance bill” because it would, in effect, require women to buy abortion coverage in advance even if they never expect to need it — such as if a woman becomes pregnant from a rape.

Sen. Gretchen Whitmer, D-East Lansing, said women who aren’t aware the riders are required or who don’t receive insurance through one of the seven companies will suffer financially and emotionally.

“ A woman in need of a medically necessary D&C procedure will not even have insurance as an option, meaning she would be required to pay for the procedure entirely on her own with a cost often totaling in the tens of thousands of dollars,” Whit­mer said.

“This isn’t talking about someone looking for an elective abortion. This is a woman with a wanted pregnancy who is forced to terminate it because of health concerns and may now may face financial ruin for doing nothing more than trying to start a family. If that’s not a direct attack on women and our health to say insurance can’t cover this type of critically important reproductive care, I don’t know what is.”

Although the law is intended to remove abortion from the list of procedures automatically covered by insurance, the majority of elective abortions in Michigan and nationwide are already paid out-of-pocket.

Only 3 percent of the 22,700 abortions in Michigan in 2012 were paid for with insurance, according to the most recent numbers from the Department of Community Health.

The total number of abortions in Michigan has also plummeted. The 22,700 abortions in 2012 reflects 52 percent drop since 1987.

Marnon said the numbers were not the point of the opt-out bill. It was the fact that someone could unknowingly be helping to pay for even one procedure they oppose on moral grounds.